Teufelsberg

Fran's Favourite Place in Berlin

Our sales and marketing manager of the 25hours Hotel Bikini Berlin, Francesca, would like to tell you about her favourite place in Berlin: The Teufelsberg hill.

The Teufelsberg, meaning ‘Devil’s mountain’, is not only of historical interest, what’s really special about it is the people who got together to breathe new life into it.What do I love about Berlin? Places like that – and Berlin has many. Mythical, historic and simply beautiful. You get the best view of Berlin, learn something about it and see how creative my city is and how it’s full of surprises.

The ruins used to be an important spying facility used by the Americans and the British during the Cold War. It’s the most significant example of architecture from that period.The members of the Teufelsberg preservation society ‘Initiative Kultur-Denk-Mal Berliner Teufelsberg’ organise historic tours; art and music projects are being launched and you can also find Germany’s biggest street art exhibition here.

Niklas, one of the society’s members, recently invited me to a secret Mando Diao concert. It was a musical tour through the Teufelsberg. At first I felt like I was in Robin Hood and thought of that Kevin Costner film. Gustaf picked us up and we were taken through the forest. His ukulele and harmonica reminded me of the priest from Robin Hood, but Gustaf is much hotter of course. There were various stations. What really gave me goosebumps was when we were taken into a pitch-black room, where everyone held hands and at the end we saw Niklas sitting on the ground with a candle. Then, in the shadows we slowly realised that he’d started to play the saxophone, yes a saxophone – so we formed a circle around him and just enjoyed the moment. Afterwards, we all went up to see the monitoring station. Björn was already waiting for us there. Gustaf and Björn gave us a performance at sunset. You can’t imagine how wide my grin was. Music and Berlin just make me happy.